Hacker News Reader

Hacker News

Comment by darkerside | Hacker News Reader

Parent Full thread

darkerside

What might this news imply about NSAIDS and their impact on forming memories?

View on HN

> Participants using aspirin at baseline but not 5 years prior were more likely to develop cognitive impairment

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4670291/

Many related articles

Uh oh.. my doctors never told me this. That explains the last 10 years x.x

I immediately thought of that too. But also other influences on these reactions might be interesting to look at. From stress levels to metabolic issues including unbalanced supply with nutrients, infections, injuries. How do you remember your last exhausting argument or traumatic experience...

Not sure about the actual mechanisms, but the idea of these kind of influences on individual memory formation is intriguing.

After all, it's hacker news :)

If it's not already known it opens an intriguing avenue for research.

Shit, what does this mean for alcohol, and its ability to interfere with forming memories? We think we know why (alcohol affects glutamate which affects memory), but with this new information, does that change things?

I was thinking recently about this thing I've encountered as a recovering alcoholic. I'm pretty sure I have a "drunk memories" brain and a "sober memories" brain - and I don't know I can access some of each while I'm in the other, that is to say sober memories when I'm drunk and drunk memories when I'm sober. I'd like to test this more, but I'm not willing to break my sobriety, so who knows if it's imagined or real.

> Research shows that individuals are less likely to remember information learned while intoxicated when they are once again sober. However, information learned or memories created while intoxicated are most effectively retrieved when the individual is in a similar state of intoxication.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/State-dependent_memory

>> I'm pretty sure I have a "drunk memories" brain and a "sober memories" brain

A pet hypothesis of mine is that maybe some of the brain chemicals act like an extra input to the neural network, and can be associated with various behaviors or memories. Lets say there are 5 of them which would create a 5 dimensional "chemical space" you're operating in. Certain things can be remembered and associated with regions in this space. Being anxious, depressed, afraid, or whatever could be temporarily "cured" by shifting you out of the current region in this space. Which chemicals work would depend on your specific programming. This might explain people who have a fear response to positive emotional situations (they were traumatized by someone that otherwise gave them positive emotions that release certain chemicals). Just a weird hypothesis - I bet it's been researched but I haven't looked.

Edit: One of the other responses to the parent post provided this:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/State-dependent_memory

Reply on news.ycombinator.com